Contemporary art trends and news from Asia and beyond

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Art Radar Asia News conducts original research and scans global news sources to bring you selected topical stories about the taste-changing, news-making and the up and coming in Asian contemporary art.

In her work “‘Chocolate Head” , a series of head sculptures of famous curators around the world, the art world becomes an unusual subject in her multimedia solo show “Adjective Life in the Nonsense Factory” at Art Sonje Center in Korea in March – April 2010.

Her works which focus on the individual are defined, she says, by adjectives, rather than verbs or nouns.

As a companion piece to Ham’s melted chocolate sculptures, she has also produced a video called “Out of Frame” which captures performance art based around the chocolate heads. This series of works examines power and the tension it creates.

Another piece “Collected Anonymous 2006-2007,” features a collection of elastic hair bands that Ham found in the streets of Amsterdam. She brought them back to Korea and conducted DNA tests, even though there was little way of finding out whom the hair bands belonged to.

Strengthening cross-strait links between Taiwan and China following the recent opening of commercial flights between the two is reflected in a new exhibition in Taipei. Featuring works by 12 artists from Sichuan and 15 artists from Taiwan, this exhibition initiates a comparative study between contemporary painting in Sichuan and Taiwan and their different historical, social and political contexts.

According to curator Howard Chen, “the relations between the two are on the one hand very close due to a common language and culture; but on the other hand far apart from each other due to historical differences”.

Painting remains dominant in China

One of the biggest differences between the two regions’ contemporary paintings is that Sichuan artists focus more on figure painting and their works are influenced by the political and nationalistic collective memory of the time.

Taiwan prefers contemporary media

However the development of contemporary art in Taiwan took a different course. The year of 1987 was a turning point. After the lifting of martial law, alternative spaces presented works that claimed to be avant-garde offering multiple perspectives representing the new open and liberal environment.

Installation art flourished from the 90’s with emerging artists searching for their own individual expressive symbols and specific subjects. Taiwan’s artists preferred to experiment with conceptual art, multimedia art, techno art, and new media art. There was much less interest in the medium of painting compared with mainland China.

Sichuan and figure painting

However, figure painting remained popular in contemporary China and used babies anad children as common subjects representing the growth of the new China. Politics and nationalism served as nourishing influences rather than harmful ones.
The Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts
Taipei National University of The Arts